Bad manners

Or as Indy wrote "Etiket 101"

There was an older man at one of our fuel stops this past week that really, really needed the "etiket 101" course. This particular place has always been difficult to get in and out of but is now "fixed" (which means it's worse). It's a complete cluster for the trucks in the parking lot but we're not blocking off the car entrance for Hardee's anymore while queueing up to fuel and we all KNOW that's the important thing.

I'm sitting there waiting for a fuel island and he just comes up and cuts everybody off to pull into the one and only island that literally had just opened up all the while ignoring my comments on the cb that there were others waiting in line that he just cutoff. Of course there are no replies and this guy is doing the "stare straight ahead and the others won't notice that I'm here" thing.

Oh yeah, guess it should be pertinent to mention that you can no longer line up behind somebody in the fuel lanes, you have to wait perpendicular to the islands which at busy times is causing those drivers waiting to park or leave parking spots to not be able to do so due to the huge line of trucks lining up to fuel. Like I said--"fixed".

Anyway back to the rude guy--fortunately another fuel island opened up a few moments after he butted his way in and after pulling up and setting the brakes I stomped my way over to him to ask didn't he see the big trucks in line (in particular MY truck!) and got this "I was just wanting to get out of here, I didn't need fuel."

WTH!!!!!!!!!

First off, he was in his late 60's so old enough to know to look around before pulling out to figure out the best way to exit. Even if he didn't have enough sense to do that, courtesy dictates that you get on the c.b. and TELL people that you're not fueling. You know the ones that you drove by when searching for the exit. Especially when one is trying to tell you over the radio that you're cutting people off. No apology at all, just I'm trying to leave. And the kicker of it? He had his radio ON, he knew that I was trying to tell him about the drivers ahead of him.

BTW, I must've looked fairly pissed because he never lowered his window past 1/2 way when I walked over to give him what for, LOL.

I did have the final laugh though. I was fueled, oil checked, windows cleaned, tires bumped, parked, and waiting in line at the fuel desk to get my shower before the guy in front of him on the fuel island pulled out. Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahhh, karma is a great thing!

He did have the audacity to get on the c.b. when I was pulling around to park to ask what did it matter that he cut me off since I was getting to leave before him. I just did what Terry does and gave him a big smile and wave when I walked by his truck with my shower bag in hand :-)

Hurry up!!

Elsie patiently waiting for me to hurry up and walk her already.

Well, it hasn't been the week from hell but it sure has been frustrating, LOL....Finally got the guy who's filling in while my dispatcher is on vacation to give me a different trailer Monday morning so that I could make my Wednesday pickup in middle Tenn. We pretty much rushed to Arkansas so that I could drop my truck off for new steer tires and the a.p.u. possibly repaired (rubber boot on fuel solenoid had a hole in it) Tuesday. Used the 4 hours off to drive the 45 minutes home, start a load of laundry (one load only so that I could have some shorts to wear), hit the gym for 5 miles on treadmill, shower, empty out the mail box and drove the 45 minutes back. Whew!

Of course the trailer I picked up Wednesday needed tires, I don't think I've been able to pick up a trailer at this customer for the past 2 months that didn't need repairs.....It's not the customer tearing things up though, it's drivers not having things fixed. Couldn't even get the landing gear up, the trailer had been dropped too high, the gearing was stripped, and the handle didn't fit properly. Oh and it weighed approx. 39,000 lbs, not over-weight but made it that much more impossible to budge. I ended up having to get the yard driver lift the trailer up with his truck while James struggled with the landing gear. Yeah, I did the girl thing and asked my hubby to come help, LOL. In my defense though, even James had difficulty with it where it was so screwed up. Rushed to our yard in central Arkansas and the mechanics had things set to rights in almost record time--including replacing a suspension system part that I didn't catch on the walk-around. All this rushing means that I have no time for a proper meal or shower because I have to make it back to Arkansas before the shop closes at 1800.

Anyway back in Laredo dealing with the fill-in again. There are a couple of trailers here that go to one of the customers in Tenn. that I pick up at but this guy claims they're not here. Never mind that I'm looking at the trailers and he's over 800 miles away. Soooo frustrating. Oh yeah, he doesn't answer his qualcomm messages either.

Why aren't we home?

Still in Laredo.........There are worse places to lay over, at least here I can bobtail pretty much anywhere, but I'm about shopped out and am past stir-crazy. Elsie agrees, lol.

Hmm, what's new? My left hip is only twinging a little this morning so hopefully I'll be able to go for a run tomorrow with no pain and Indy called me this morning, YAY!! Having a blog and commenting on others has brought me so many new friends that I otherwise would have never met. I love web 2.0!!!!!!

A funny story about my last training ride before I left home--I was trying to go up this huge hill that's back behind our neighborhood and made it up one side okay (albeit very slowly). rode around the ridge to catch my breath and prepared to go up the other side of the hill to head back home. Unfortunately I didn't get up quite enough momentum and then missed the gear shifting down........Yep, in slow motion I topple over to the right while clipped in and did it right in front of somebody's house. You know they were outside ;) because that kind of thing can't go unwitnessed. I was like a turtle on its back, couldn't move my feet to unclip at all, had to reach down and unstrap the left shoe to pull my foot out before I could get loose. Soooooooo embarrassing, esp. with the guy hollering out in a panicked one "Are you okay?!?" The only thing hurt was my ego, lol.

Sunday lunch at Whataburger

Salado

If you click on the picture to enlarge it, the black speck above the buildings between 12 and one o'clock is a parachutist (?) coming down. There's a business that does the jumps behind the old fuel stop at Salado, TX. One of these days I'm going to stop and do a tandem jump. BTW, the new rest areas here are AWESOME! Huge truck parking area, a workout area, playground and very attractive buildings. My only complaint is that the pet walk area is a mud hole when it rains and full of burrs the rest of the time.

Cow on the loose

Actually it's just a calf. He/she had somehow gotten out of the pasture and was trying to get back to its mama when we came by. Poor baby.

Reflections

Not a great photo but kind of interesting with the layers of reflections. Taken on Hwy 19 at the stopt light in Emory, TX.

Icy-Hot

Not only did my vacation get cut short by 1/2 a week I have somehow managed to pull a muscle in my left hip. I'm not quite sure exactly when or how I did it other than it was Wednesday night at some point. I think it was a combo of twisting and bumping into something at the same time while trying to put my truck back together after shutting down at Hurricane Mills, TN for the evening but for the life of me I can't place WHEN or HOW.......I know Terry has mentioned that she'll come up with these mysterious bruises but she pulls a flatbed so there's a huge amount of physical stuff involved with that but all I was doing was putting stuff away. Maybe I twisted funny in my sleep......Anyway the pain is located on the side of my left hip right on the bone.

Hurricane Mills is one of my favorite places to run esp. if I take the route to the east but it was a huge mistake to go that way Thursday. I'd woke up with my hip aching but thought it would work itself out once I got moving. Silly me didn't think about the hills and the gravel! Got started running, was ok, kind of achy but bearable. Then I hit the gravel road.............Uneven surface + hills = way more twisting than what my poor body could take. Evidently I started taking much shallower breaths and slightly holding my breath whenever my foot would hit the ground so I ended up with the mother of all stitches in my right side. Imagine a very sharp needle digging into a nerve and that will get you close to the pain I was in.

Crunch. Left foot hitting the gravel.

Spasm on left hip

Crunch. Right foot hitting the gravel

Sharp needle digging into abs on right side.

Crunch. Spasm. Crunch. Sharp needle.

Yeah, I ended up taking some major walk breaks. Once I got back on pavement I was able
to run again without much pain, but I really, really, really should have turned around the moment my left hip started spasming instead of trying to tough it out to get my 4 miles done. My fragrance of choice this week since then has been Eau de Icy-Hot. Very appealing, LOL!

Other stuff for the week

James and I got to run (drive!) with Terry from Little Rock to W. Memphis, yay! I'm afraid I wasn't very good company though 'cause I was sulking at James for him deciding we needed to go back to work earlier than what I wanted. Yes, we drive separate trucks but if I wanted to get back on some semblance of a normal hometime schedule with him I had to leave out too. Marriage=compromise (on both sides).

The trailer I picked up at Mt. Juliet had THREE bad tires. One bald on the outer half, one with flat spots, and the third with flat spots and cord showing. I'm lucky that I was able to make it back to a company shop with the latter. It also had some rail damage that couldn't be repaired with the trailer loaded, will just have to watch for the trailer to come back across with the empties and have it transloaded so that it can be fixed.

I'm having to lay over in Laredo this weekend. The trailer that I was supposed to pick up isn't here and I can't get the weekend dispatch to switch me over to one of the other Mt. Juliet trailers that are here. Called in yesterday (Saturday) morning with the info about the loads that are on our yard and was told that they were already preplanned on other drivers but this was after being told there weren't any there at all. When I gave the info about what was actually on the yard, there was a huge pause and you could almost hear the guy's brain scrambling to come up with a reason why I couldn't be planned on one of those. Don't guess it matters a huge bunch because I have until Wednesday to get back to Mt. Juliet but would much rather be sitting at home than down here right now. I'm not crazy about the 100F+ temps, lol. And James is staying here too (his trailer was here but he has a Wed. appt. too so no hurry).

Walked a lot yesterday shopping and with Elsie so my hip was a little tender again this morning. Instead of trying to tough out a run I'm taking it easy--well, trying to anyway, this is very frustrating. James is starting over on the couch to 5k plan so that was my workout this morning, a little bit of running with a lot of walking. My hip would kind of twinge a little when we'd start out on the run part but within seconds it would loosen up. Hopefully by next weekend this will all have been a bad memory.

Woolly Hollow State Park hike

Lazy days--sort of

James and I have been on vacation the past 1.5 weeks and it has (mostly) been very lovely. We managed to get quite a lot done around the house (although not near what should've been done, eep). I've been able to get in some 2 a day workouts, something that is nigh near impossible while I'm driving during the week.

Yesterday we checked out a new to us state park for some flat water kayaking and picnicking. We're hoping that Elsie will decide she likes to float around on the water and I think she would if it wasn't for one small little bitty detail--we have separate kayaks and it drives her absolutely bonkers that James and I are not in the same one. Elsie spent what little time we were on the water jumping into the lake swimming back and forth between us and whining. So the plan is to rent a canoe next time or leave her at home.

This is not a happy kayaker! And yes, she gets to wear a life jacket--it has a handle at the top that comes in super handy when she jumps out and swims to the other person.

Oh, the lake we went to is Lake Bennett at Woolly Hollow State Park, very small, only about 40 acre of water. But it is very pretty and during the week not near as crowded as Greers Ferry. Nice clean bathrooms, beach area for swimming, and nothing larger than a trolling motor allowed. There is also a 3.5 mile trail around the perimeter of the lake/cabins/park area that I plan to run on sometime before the year is up. It's too far to drive just for a run but James and I plan to make several return visits so he can fish while I just paddle/float around.

Cabin and historical marker.

Happy 4th of July!

Hope everybody is enjoying the holiday here in the states. I did want to direct everybody to Truckin TedyBehr's blog because he has a quite nice and informative post about the significance of July 4th. Much better than I could ever hope to write, well done TedyBehr!

The goodie bowl

The runner/cyclists version of a candy bowl!

'til the cows come home

Even the cows thought it was too darned hot this morning! It wasn't as bad as yesterday but still a little too much on the humid side.

Brickfest 5k

Well, it wasn't a p.r. but then again I wasn't expecting one today due to the heat and my allergies giving me fits. I did manage to make my goal of under 25 minutes--24:41 according to the Garmin, 24:44 according to the race results.

Did my warmup run of 1.29 miles with Elsie and was dripping wet before a .25 mile was done, ewww. Ended up killing the bottle of water I'd brought with me before the race even started and was looking for more to no avail. Not the way you want to start any race much less a 5k where every single second counts.

First time for me to run this 5k but I do run in the Malvern area at least once a month so knew it was going to have some small rolling hills. Nothing major, just enough to make it challenging, especially in the heat :-). Lined up near the front with some Cabot friends and it was soooo hard trying to breath with the humidity and being surrounded by other equally sweaty runners.

Took off way too fast--knew it when I was running but you just have those times when you're so hyped up and take off like a jackrabbit. You just know you're going to pay for it in 1.5 miles but still can't slow down. 1st mile was done in 7:20, ouch, fast for me on a 5k in cool weather much less a hot, steamy, sunny, hot day. Yeah, I know I wrote hot twice.........

2nd mile was almost a full minute slower-8:12 per garmin. I was one of those people that I hate to run near by this point because my breathing was out of control, very loud and close to being gasping, ewww. Started having a handful of women pass me on this mile, grrr. Legs were starting to feel heavy from fatigue. It was a fairly hard week of driving and I probably shouldn't have done the tempo run Thursday afternoon.

Mile 3 was over a minute slower than the first, 8:32. Heavy-ass legs and I was starting to swear somebody had tied bricks to my feet. It was all I could do to keep pushing and not take a walk break.

I did try and grab a water at the first water stop to throw down my back but just at the moment I started to reach for a cup the woman holding the tray turned away. Ended up with orange gatorade instead so no cooling down with that, yuck! Several people afterwards said they'd had the same problem with the volunteers not quite knowing how to do the drink cups. Can't have a good race without volunteers so I'm not going to complain too much.

All in all, I'm pleased with my race. It's the first 5k of the year for me with summer temps and I'm ecstatic that I met my goal of under 25 minutes. Would've preferred negative splits but hey I'll take this. It wasn't a race that I felt good doing but then again I've been told that you're NOT supposed to feel good running a 5k, LOL.

I started back to using the treadmill for my speed workouts 2 weeks ago (might as well get some use out of the gym membership). When I set my 5k personal record in 2008 at Batesville I was using the treadmill a fair bit during that training cycle and I think that made a huge difference. All my other runs will still be on the road but I think I need the treadmill to get my running cadence back up since I'm not able to make the Cabot group speed training workouts during the week.

The aftermath--horrible picture of me but that's what happens when somebody points a camera at me and then wants me to smile after a hellacious race, LOL!






















Final results:
18/160 females
100/330 overall
Took home 1st place female age 40-44. Actually 2nd in age group but the woman ahead of me placed in the masters division. I missed placing in the female master's division by 12 seconds!

Abigail's 5th Birthday

Last weekend was my neice's 5th birthday party. She's getting to be a big girl!

Batter up!!!!

My sis and me.